Section: Feature Film Competition

PATIENT #1

PATIENT #1

Rezo Gigineishvili
GE, 2023, 0 Min

The Soviet Union in the spring of 1985. There is still snow outside. In a huge hospital complex, one patient in particular is cared for: the Secretary General. Until the elections, patient number one must be kept alive and happy. The frozen, old and senile Secretary General becomes a symbol of the disintegration of his entire country.

#feature #drama #political 

Georgian director Rezo Gigineishvili finds an striking metaphor for the powerlessness of power in a government hospital. A parable about a society that is consumed by the spirit of subjugation, about powerful people whose power leads to self-deception and ignorance of obvious facts, and a political system that has to artificially keep its symbolic figures alive in order to survive itself. And all of this with a fingertip on the nuclear button. In between is the nurse Sascha, who, being treated disrespectfully by the powerful men in the house, has to exclusively look after the terminally ill Secretary General. From their perspective we experience the dying autocrat's last days. Inspired by the fate of General Secretary Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, who ruled the Soviet Union from February 1984 to March 1985 and spent almost the entire time in hospital, terminally ill with pulmonary emphysema.

In October 2023, this film won the prestigious Werner Herzog Film Prize. The eulogy says: “Rezo Gigineishvili's film shows, only made visible in detail, the final crisis and the impending collapse of an entire empire. His approach is courageous, radical. You want to laugh, but you can't, and you want to cry, but you can't either.“  (Werner Herzog) 

Text: Jörg Taszman/Bernd Buder

Drehbuch
Aleksandr Rodionov, Rezo Gigineishvili
Kamera
Piotr Bratersky
Ton
Kirill Vasilenko
Schnitt
Georgy Isaakayn
Ausstattung
Gregory Pushkin
Musik
Gia Kancheli
Rezo Gigineishvili

Rezo Gigineishvili - Born in Tbilisi in 1982. Graduated from director's faculty of VGIK (Marlen Khutsiev's class) in 2005 . Directed more than 150 music videos and advertising clips. His feature "Hostages' (2017) was premiered in Berlinale's Panorama and participated in more than 30 international film festivals including Telluride, Edinburgh, Thessaloniki, Shanghai, Haifa, Cairo. Other features: Heat (2005), Love with Accent (2012), No Borders (2015). He lives in Tbilisi, Georgia.

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